As is well known, pea soup is standard fare in many households and institutions. Traditionally, split pea soup is formed by boiling peas with various spices in large quantities of water for approximately two to three hours. Though canned pea soup is also available, the bulk, weight, and cost associated therewith makes it prohibitive for use in the food service industries.
In view of the traditional method of preparing pea soup being time consuming and canned pea soup being costly and difficult to store, there has been developed in the prior art reconstitutable pea soup which may be prepared rapidly, is less costly, and easier to store due to its reduced bulk and weight. Currently, there are two well-known methods of producing a reconstitutable pea soup. In the first method, the peas are cooked, dried, and subsequently milled to a reconstitutable powder. However, one of the major problems associated with this particular method is the agglomeration which occurs when water is added to the powder. In this respect, the addition of water to the pea powder typically results in the formation of balls of pea powder, the middles of which are impervious to water. As such, constant stirring and mixing is required to achieve the proper transition of the pea powder into solution. A second major problem associated with this method is that the texture of the pea powder is typically not smooth when the water is added thereto. In this respect, despite the constant stirring and mixing, small lumps of powder typically remain within the solution, thus causing the resultant product to have a sandy mouth feel.
The second widely practiced method is a drum-drying method wherein a pea slurry is prepared and cooked with spices. After cooking, the slurry is drum dried into flakes on a conventional drum dryer. However, this particular process is extremely costly, thus making it highly uneconomical for mass commercialization. The present invention is intended to alleviate the deficiencies associated with prior art methods of making dehydrated pea soup by providing a system and method of processing a comestible leguminous product (i.e., peas) into a quick-cooking and instantly reconstitutable pea soup product.